Unlike Us: What to expect in 2012 by Marc Stumpel:

2011 was an exciting year with the Occupy movement, Facebook’s settlement with FTC’s charges, Europe versus Facebook, decentralized social media alternatives developing, critical social media art, more awareness about tracking and a significant wave of criticism after Facebook’s new changes. Moreover, the Unlike Us research network was launched at the Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, where the first conference was held.

Now in 2012, we are looking forward to Unlike Us #2 in Amsterdam. Artists, designers, scholars, activists and programmers will gather to analyze the economic and cultural aspects of dominant social media platforms and discuss alternative, decentralized social media software. Continue reading

So What Again Is HASTAC? Post #HASTAC2011 Reflections on a Network Founded on a Theory That’s a Practice by Cathy Davidson, originally posted on HASTAC:

We have just finished two and a half glorious days at the University of Michigan. Soon we at HASTAC Central will write a formal thank you blog to all the incredible planners, organizers, and participants of our fifth HASTAC Conference, Digital Scholarly Communications, sponsored by the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the Kidder Residency in the Arts, and led by two of our HASTAC Steering Committee members, Danny Herwitz and Julie Thompson Klein. And many others. Incredible event.Incredible people.

Now some overview thinking, not just about the #hastac2011 but about what it all means at this point in HASTAC’s history: Continue reading

[Image: Agata Olek] Performative Wearables, originally posted on V_2: Since wearable technology pieces are often designed to be interactive, and in most cases are presented to an audience in some sort of way, we thought it was interesting to do a thought experiment: can every ‘wearable’ be considered a performative work, and can this approach help to design and create more meaningful projects?

When Valerie Lamontagne was ‘researcher-in-residence’ at V2_Lab, we dedicated two editions of the eTextile Workspace to the topic of ‘Performativity‘. Continue reading

“In a very short time since they appeared, digital photo frames have become so popular that they now regularly invite aesthetic experimentation. In his recent project Poser, Constant Dullaart has offered an ironic view of this media. Slipping inside the device, the artist has designed some chroma keys of himself and, using a cinematic technique, he has added himself into some group portraits found online (one of the distinguishing features of the Dutch artist is his reworking of material from the web). From Leon Battista Alberti onwards, art history is littered with attempts to overcome the physical limits of the frame - to enter into or move beyond it.

Therefore the originality of Poser is not to be found in this invasion, but rather in the artist’s intention to inhabit contemporary technological devices, to become part of them and to understand their specific natures. Continue reading

[Image: spencer lowell and www.ecloudproject.com] From Postscapes: Tracking the Internet of Things: These 10 networked art projects show the many ways that using real-time data like weather, pollution sensors, wave monitoring and all the other outputs that are streaming around us can be used to visualize and engage our environment in new ways.

1) eCLOUD Project: Installed in the San Jose International Airport eCLOUD is a permanent art work by Aaron Koblin, Nik Hafermaas and Dan Goods. It is constructed from polycarbonate tiles that fade in between transparent and opaque states and are controlled by real time weather from NOAA from locations around the world. Continue reading

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“Boskoi is an application for Android mobiles that allows people to create a checklist of geo-localized spontaneous food in urban areas. Continue reading

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Remixthebook: Everything, all at once: Review by Mark Hancock, Furtherfield.org:

“For us, art is not an end in itself … but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism
of the times we live in.” Hugo Ball.

The challenge in trying to review a book like Mark Amerika’s Remixthebook, is the feeling you can only do justice to the text by doing the same with your review. The apparent simplicity coupled with the multifarious outcomes are intoxicating. You could be mistaken for believing that every possible remix would produce fresh and exciting outcomes. The key of course, is to have good source material in the first place. Continue reading

Transformations Issue No. 20, 2011 — Slow Media: Digital Suicide and the Biopolitics of Leaving Facebook by Tero Karppi: Continue reading